My life from the heart of Berlin!

Archive for the tag “recipe”

I was thinking a lot about my blog the last couple of weeks. Looking back I can truly say that it was successful and definitely the way I wanted it to turn out. On the other hand I was quite busy the last months teaching myself to sew to improve my skills and to be able to make my own clothes. All I can say is that I’ve learned a lot so far and I’m continuing to teach myself and to try new things out. The only problem of it all is that sewing and pattern-making takes a lot of time. Since fashion has been my love for many years now I’ve made the decision to indulge into it very deep this year and to devote my free time completely to cloth-making. I don’t want to give up my blog, but use it to share with all of you who are interested my steps and progress in making clothes. I’m still not sure about the name and the design of my blog. Maybe i will not change it completely. I’m still very thankful to all of you who decided to follow my blog and I hope that most of you will continue enjoy and to follow my journey. As for now, I’m presenting you my last recipe so far. A ginger loaf with rose petals and white chocolate.

Ingredients

350 g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

3 – 4 tsp ground ginger

8 globes preserved stem ginder in syrup or honey, drained and chopped

125 g butter, softened

100 g light sugar

225 g golden syrup or honey

1 egg, beaten

75 ml milk

a bunch of roses

Instructions

Grease and line a 900 g loaf tin with non-stick baking paper. Preheat the oven to 160 ° C. Sift together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger. Set aside. Chop the globes of the ginger and add to the flour mixture. I’ve used some preserved ginger in honey. Melt the butter sugar and golden syrup/honey in a small pan. Set aside to cool slightly. Beat the egg and milk together. Stir the cold syrup/honey into the dry ingredients, followed by the egg and milk and beat well. If you like you can use some of the rose petals and add into the mixture. It will give the loaf an interesting taste.

Spoon into the tin, bake for about 1 1/4 hours until just firm to the touch. Cool on a wire rack and decorate with a white chocolate couverture and the rose petals the way you like it. Enjoy and have a great weekend!

The winter season did in fact start and its’s a little bit late for preserves, but I made this year some quince-plum jam for the first time and I did not have the chance to post it yet. I’m so busy all the time with work and all my hobbies, it’s not easy to find the time for a recipe post. Not only that it’s some time ago that I’ve made this jam, but it’s also already gone. I’ve eaten it and prepared some cake with it. I also gave one jar to my mum to use it for her baking. This was only fair, because I received the quinces from my parents garden. This fruit is usually very hard, so that you have to cook it to eat it. It’s used quite often for jam or jelly. I also decided to make some jam out of it. The main reason was that I did never prepare jam before.

It’s very easy to make your own jam, so there is no difficulty or trick behind it. To make my jam more interesting I decided to add plums and ginger to it. That’s why my jam has this beautiful red color on the photographies. You can make your jam out of every fruit to love, there are many great combinations and I’m sure I’ll some of them in the future.

Ingredients

3 quinces

3 plums

1 tbsp (fresh) ground ginger

1 fresh ground vanilla bean

400 grams preserving sugar (1 to 1)

Instructions

As you can see on my photography, I had one big jar and one small jar full of jam in the end. You can use more fruits if you want to make more jam. My cooked quinces and plums made together 400 grams.

First, chop the quinces and the plums in quarters. Put them in a big cooking pot and cover all pieces with water. Bring it all together to a boil and cook it until soft. This should take some 30 minutes.When the quinces are soft enough you can separate the fruits from the juicy water and use a blender, mortar or whatever to blend the soft fruit pieces together. When making jelly instead of jam you need to add extra fruit juice from the cooked fruits. For my amount of fruits (400 grams) I would use two cups of juice to make jelly of it. I did not make jelly, so I simply drank the juice water.

Now add some grounded vanilla and ginger to the cooked fruits and mix it with the same amount of 400 grams of preserving sugar. Adjust the amount of the sugar to the product you’re using, 1 to 1 means that you need to use the same amount of sugar as the amount of fruits you have. Check the texture of the jam and add some juicy if necessary, but remember that the jam gets more firm after a while.Put the jam in a jar and keep it in the fridge if you’re using it up daily. It’s really fun to make preserves. The smell from cooking the fruits is just incredible. It can also be a very beautiful and personal present. I wished I had more time to spend in the kitchen to produce such lovely things.